And sadly it's nothing special. When typing a URL that doesn't resolve on a mainland China ISP a Baidu-sponsored search page (full of ads, no simple search box) appears.
It was only in 2006 when google.com itself was redirected to baidu.com by some ISPs some of the time.
Some of the country (in major cities, forget the countryside) has the facade of development, but with basic corruption endemic at the bottom and top levels, it has a whole lot further to go.

The software is required to be delivered with by manufacturers on harddisc or one CD. It was never intended to be required to run as a user [wikipedia.org]. The scope of the software is mainly parental control. This hole thing in the media about censorshipware sounds like yet another propaganda campagne by the West.